


dying in the lack of luck and love

by neutrophilic



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: But they get better, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, M/M, Pining, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 11:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14260173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neutrophilic/pseuds/neutrophilic
Summary: Esca can't stop Marcus from dying over and over and over again. The fact that that Esca keeps dying along with him is more secondary.Or, they're trapped in a time loop and only Esca realizes.





	dying in the lack of luck and love

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from 'Sleep Gets Your Ghost' by Buke & Gase.

The first time, Marcus is on top of Esca, fist raised, when he takes an arrow in the throat. It’s not a clean shot. It isn’t going to matter. Esca immediately rears up and places his hands on Marcus’s shoulders, trying to keep him steady.

“Marcus,” he says, with difficulty.

And then there’s a sharp pain in his head. Then nothing. Esca doesn’t even see who killed them. 

———

In the morning, Esca wakes and presses his fingers to his temple. They come away clean.

“Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks.

Esca looks at Marcus, his cheek still creased with the imprint of his cloak, and Esca lets his dream go.

“Yes,” he says. He said no last time. He doesn't let himself think about it.

It isn’t a surprise when the man in the woods they’re looking for is a Roman deserter. Nor is it when Marcus implicitly trusts Guern over him. It stings, even if it is accurate that Esca’s been withholding the whole truth. Esca knows that there’s only one possible end to Marcus’s quest: both of them dead in a ditch. Esca's only hope is to kill enough time that winter will force them back south of the wall, but, knowing Marcus, he’ll march them back and forth in the snow until they starve to death.

After leaving Guern, when Marcus jumps off his horse and tackles Esca, that too seems inevitable. The arrow, however, is still a surprise. His dream, he thinks. This is exactly like his dream. But, unlike in his dream, Esca can’t make himself move to try to comfort Marcus.

Marcus’s eyes are wide with pain and fear, but he isn’t making a single sound. Esca isn’t sure if he even can, or if he’s drawing upon every ounce of his Roman propriety to try to die with honor.

Someone hauls Marcus off Esca by the hair and throws him aside. Marcus lets out a short, wet gasp. Move, Esca tells himself, but he can’t.

“Who are you?” a man painted blue asks, spear raised.

It takes Esca a long time to realize that the man must be a Seal warrior. It takes him longer still to answer.

The Seal warrior pulls Esca to his feet. “Who was that?”

“A Roman,” Esca says. He doesn’t look at Marcus. “I tricked him into taking me north.”

Later, after they’d taken him back to their village and fed him food that almost tasted like his childhood, Esca goes out into the night and throws up as discreetly as he can. He couldn’t hear anything they’d told him over the last sound Marcus had made, still echoing in his ears.

———

He wakes up under the sky, shivering. The day is still grey and new and ready to be made again. Marcus is frowning in his sleep, and Esca watches him until the nausea passes.

Eventually, Marcus stirs and sits up. His nose is red from the chill. “Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks, his voice thick with sleep.

“I think I know a shortcut,” Esca says.

Guern still finds them. So do the Seal People. They both die this time. And the next and the next.

———

Right at the place that Guern normally jumps out at him, Esca pulls on his reins and pauses. Instead, Guern tackles Marcus to the ground. Marcus doesn’t notice Guern’s telling scar under his chin when slitting his throat, and Esca doesn’t point it out.

The Seal People find them when Esca, flushed with victory, asks Marcus what he wants for dinner. This time Esca’s the one with the arrow in the throat, and Marcus is the one shocked into stillness.

———

“Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks. He has the same crease as always on his cheek.

Esca memorized it after the third time. He wants to rub at it until it smooths out.

“Does this all seem familiar to you?” Esca asks.

“No,” Marcus says. “Do you think we’re lost?”

After Guern, Esca leads Marcus in a different direction. The Seal People interrupt their dinner. Esca and Marcus put up a good fight, but the sheer numbers overwhelm them. 

———

“No,” Marcus says. “Do you think we’re lost?”

“Not that,” Esca says. It’s been clear from near the beginning that only Esca is cursed with the knowledge that they’re trapped. But he still needs to ask. “Does it seem like we’ve done this all before?”

“No.” Marcus shifts and starts poking at the fire. “All of this is new to me.”

Esca knows that picking a third direction is futile. He does it anyways. 

———

Esca has never seen Marcus so angry as when he refuses to get on his horse in the morning.

“I order you to follow me!”

“We’ll die,” Esca says, still in his bedding.

“I didn’t think you were a coward,” Marcus says, suddenly cold. “And I thought honor meant something to you.”

He rides off. Esca doesn't move the whole day, hoping against hope that Marcus will come back for him. He doesn’t.

———

Guern’s body is stiff on the ground, blood pooling from his neck.

Esca turns to Marcus. “He must have been following us.”

Marcus stops cleaning his blade, alert. “Do you think there are more?”

“Yes,” Esca says, not exactly lying. “I’ve heard of the people that live near here. They’re excellent trackers. We should try to go along the river.”

It doesn’t work the first time.

———

But the second time, Marcus listens when Esca cautions against a cooking fire. He also allows Esca first watch. We made it, Esca thinks, desperately trying to fight off sleep. We—

Marcus shakes him awake. “Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” he asks.

Esca can’t manage to stay awake on the third try either. So that’s part of it, he thinks, sleeping. It had struck him as odd how he’d fallen right asleep in the hut of the man who had killed Marcus. But, if that was part of the magic—

He doesn’t let himself think about how staying alive hasn’t stopped this. He doesn’t want to lose face with Marcus by crying, even if only he will remember it tomorrow.

———

“Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks, his voice thick with sleep.

“No,” Esca says, stuck.

They do.

Esca decides that he needs to try something new. 

———

“Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks.

He always asks the same question, but it’s full of variation in his inflection, depending on what Esca’s doing. If Esca’s gotten up first, then his voice is raspy and slow, and it always stops Esca in his tracks. If Esca’s slower to rise, then Marcus sounds more like his normal self. And if Esca pretends to sleep in, then Marcus will ask it over breakfast, like an afterthought. Esca wonders if he’d ask the air if Esca snuck off somewhere safe before Marcus awoke.

For once, Esca doesn’t answer.

“Esca?” Marcus asks. He peers at Esca. “Are you well?”

“No,” Esca says. He’d been to the Seal People’s village last night. They’d brought Marcus’s head along.

Marcus frowns and reaches out as if to test Esca’s forehead for a fever. Nobody’s done that for Esca since he was a child.

At that, Esca turns and loses his dinner. It’s been so long that he doesn’t remember what it was.

Marcus declares the day a rest day.

For the first time, Esca thinks as he falls asleep against his will, Marcus and Guern are both still alive at the end of the day. Maybe that’s it?

It’s not. 

———

Esca shakes Marcus awake. “I know who has the Eagle.”

He hasn’t touched Marcus in weeks. He’s been very good about avoiding their fatal fight in front of the Seal People, even if sometimes all he wants to do is grab Marcus and drag him back south.

“You do?” Marcus asks. “Why haven’t you told me before now?”

“Do you want me to show you or not?”

Marcus, of course, does. He always does, every day that it takes Esca to very carefully map out a path to the Seal People’s village through painful trial and error. Esca learns how it feels to die in any number of different ways. The harder lesson by far is how to keep his head when Marcus dies first. The blood always rushes to his ears and his hands always tremble, but he improves.

On the twenty-third try, they get within sight of the smoke from the Seal People’s fires. “Do you know where they’ll keep the Eagle?” Marcus asks in what he thinks is a whisper.

“No, but I will.” 

———

Esca doesn’t need the Seal warrior’s help to get to his feet any more. Marcus is dead, again, but he’ll be fine tomorrow. Esca won’t be, but he hasn’t been for a long time.

Mostly he thinks that they’re both dead and stuck in a version of the afterlife he’s never heard of. Maybe the Roman one, but Esca doesn’t know enough about it, since he'd previously refused to learn anything about Rome that wouldn't directly lead to keeping him alive. Asking Marcus about it now is pointless.

By the time they get to the village, Esca is prepared to carry out his plan. The hard part is behind him, back when he had to watch Marcus die and not do anything about it. All he needs now is to seem likable and forget that Marcus's blood has seeped into his hem.

The plan is laughably stupid, but cleverness hasn't gotten him very far, so far. All he’s going to do is find the Seal Prince’s young son and ask him. While he might not know, Esca had decided that he was the most likely to be willing to tell him. And if he didn’t, Esca would simply come back again and again until he found it out.

When the child does point out the cave where it’s stored, Esca thanks him sincerely, despite his growing apprehension. It’s on the other side of the village from the safe route Esca’s figured out. He hasn’t mastered watching Marcus die yet. 

———

It takes weeks. When Marcus finally cradles the Eagle in his arms, Esca thinks it might have been worth it.

———

“Do you think we can make it to the forest today?” Marcus asks.

Esca doesn’t say anything. Not then and not for the rest of the day. When the Seal People come, he learns how to die silently too.

———

“After death,” he asks Guern and Marcus over the same lunch he’d been eating for months, “do you have to live out your mistakes for eternity?”

“Is that a threat?” Guern asks.

“No,” he says.

Marcus doesn’t answer.

———

One morning, Esca lets Marcus press his cool hand against his brow. He doesn’t need to fake a shiver.

Marcus considers for a while. “You don’t seem to have a fever.”

Esca lets them shoot Marcus in the throat later. He’s knows it’s the easiest possible death for Marcus. He doesn’t have the energy to convince Marcus to do anything other than die.

———

Esca watches Marcus until he wakes. Esca reaches out and drags his thumb down the crease on his cheek. Marcus leans into it for a second before pulling himself away.

“I know where the Eagle is,” Esca says, because he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Not long after Marcus saved his life back in the arena, Esca noticed how Marcus’s gaze sometimes got stuck on his shoulder or his mouth. He braced himself for Marcus to do something about it, but he never did. At first, he was relieved and furious that he was relieved in equal measure. Some time along the way, the relief had faded. Esca thinks it was before all this, before they died for the first time, but he’s not sure anymore.

He’s been thinking that there might be another way out of this endless repetition of days, but he doesn’t want to do it. Esca isn’t sure he can bear trying over and over again to get past whatever is holding Marcus back. That isn’t what he wants.

———

Esca walks Marcus to the Eagle over and over again. He tells himself it’s because it’s a day where no one dies. It’s not, he knows it’s not.

He gets sick eventually of the way Marcus looks at him over the campfire with the Eagle in his hands. Gratitude isn’t what he wants either.

———

“Esca, look at this,” Marcus says, holding out the Eagle. It shimmers in the firelight.

Instead of his usual demurral, Esca comes over obligingly.

“There’s barely a scratch on it,” Marcus says. “I can’t thank you—“

“Tell me about the Roman afterlife,” Esca demands. He can’t listen to that again.

Marcus gives him a strange look and does. Esca sits as close as Marcus will allow. Nothing Marcus tells him sounds anything like what they’re going through now.

———

“There’s barely a scratch on it,” Marcus says. “I can’t thank you enough, Esca. Truly. I—“

“You could.” Esca is sitting very close to Marcus.

Marcus tears his eyes away from the Eagle; they land in the vicinity of Esca’s mouth.

“I couldn’t,” he says, voice low. 

———

“I can’t thank you enough—“

Esca kisses him. He’s wanted to for months and months, ever since Marcus asked him if he shamed himself during surgery. If they’re dead, Esca had thought, watching Marcus lift up the Eagle for at least the twentieth time in a row, then he should stop lying to himself.

Marcus’s mouth is slack with surprise for a moment. Then it’s Esca’s turn to be surprised when Marcus clumsily kisses him back. For a minute, he’s frozen, his heart pounding in his chest. He hadn't—

Before Esca can press in further, Marcus sits back. “I can’t,” Marcus says. “It wouldn’t be honorable.”

“Why?” Esca asks, despite himself. He knows why.

Marcus shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Esca hates him for it.

———

After Guern tells Marcus that Esca knows where the Eagle is, Esca is too furious to think straight. When Marcus starts yelling at him, Esca shouts right back and launches himself off his horse onto Marcus.

When the Seal People surround them, Esca carefully stands up and away from Marcus.

"Who is it that you talk to in the Roman tongue?" the Seal Prince demands.

"My slave," Esca says, looking away from Marcus.

The next morning Esca wakes up in the Seal Prince's hut. It takes him a long time to master himself. The effort is worth it when he sees Marcus, face twisted with hatred.

———

Much, much later, when they’re south of the wall, Marcus asks, his voice thick with sleep, “Do you think we’ll make it to London today?”

Esca cannot control his tears, nor explain them.

Alive, he reminds himself, not for the first time, Marcus is alive. And, for the first time, he believes it.


End file.
